The Leftovers Premiere Date Delayed By Two Weeks

HBO has made a schedule change for their upcoming series The Leftovers. The drama, which comes from Damon Lindelof and author Tom Perrotta, was originally scheduled to debut immediately following the Game of Thrones Season 4 finale, which is set for June 15. However, HBO has pushed the series' premiere date off to June 29.

The benefit of The Leftovers' originally set June 15 premiere date is that the hour-long drama would benefit from the Game of Thrones lead-in, and then the following Sunday (June 22), benefit again when True Blood takes over Game of Thrones' 9:00 p.m. timeslot. The Leftovers will now premiere at 10:00 p.m. on June 29, which means it'll still get that True Blood lead-in, but a finale and a premiere lead in back-to-back was probably its best possible bet, especially as it would've grabbed two different audiences and air after two big episodes. Alas, there's a delay.

HBO didn't state why they were pushing off the premiere date, however Deadline did report earlier this month that the 10-episode drama was going on a production hiatus to prep its final episodes. From what HBO said in a statement at that time, they had themselves on a pretty tight schedule for this series, and they'd just finished up the sixth episode and needed more time to prepare for the final four. At that time, the hiatus wasn't expected to affect the premiere date, which had just been announced the week prior. But maybe that's not the case. It's probably safe to assume as much. HBO's not in the habit of putting gaps between new episodes, so it's likely that they'd rather delay the premiere of the series than to air the first six episodes and force people to wait a week or two for the next new one to air.

While the reason for the premiere delay wasn't specified in HBO's announcement, the premium cable channel did state that they'll be airing the first trailer for The Leftovers on Sunday, April 27 at 9:00 pm., ahead of the Game of Thrones episode. It's the first full trailer, but not the first video we've seen for this series. The network released this Season 1 tease earlier this month.

Based on Tom Perrotta's novel, The Leftovers takes place in the wake of an event people are calling The Rapture, where a noticeable percentage of the human population has simply up and vanished into thin air. With no explanation of what happened or why some people were "chosen" and so many others left behind, the remaining human population is left to move on with their lives in the absence of their friends and loved ones. The cast includes Justin Theroux, Amy Brenneman, Christopher Eccleston, Liv Tyler, Charlie and Max Carver, Carrie Coon and Ann Dowd. Damon Lindelof serves as the show runner for the series.